'Grateful Doe' identified after dying in 1995 car accident

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By ALANNA DURKIN

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A car crash victim who became known as "Grateful Doe" because of two Grateful Dead ticket stubs in his pocket has been identified more than 20 years after he was killed, authorities said Thursday.

DNA evidence confirmed that the man whose identity remained a mystery for two decades is Jason Callahan of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said Arkuie Williams, a spokesman for the Virginia Medical Examiner's Office.

Callahan was 19 when he was killed in southern Virginia in 1995. His injuries made him unrecognizable and his body was never claimed.

In recent years, the "Grateful Doe" mystery captured the attention of Internet sleuths, who created pages dedicated to solving the case and circulated a computer-generated image of his face.

FULL story at link.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0fd14e4bbfa0412584bc267ddad66ef3/grateful-doe-identified-after-dying-1995-car-accident

[Cal Carpenter]

1. Wow! That's pretty cool.

Mystery solved - there was a lot of speculation about that kid's identity over the years.

It is amazing to see all these old cases that have been getting cleared up with DNA.

[Lochloosa]

2. Two stubs ftom '95..

At least he's saw the Dead in their final year.

[TwilightGardener]

3. This actually makes me angry, mother as I am of a 19 year old.

For twenty years, his "family" just shrugged off his disappearance and really didn't give a shit if he was alive or dead. That is unbelievable to me. I can't imagine any circumstance in life where I look around one day and think, "well, I HAD a son at some point, seems I haven't seen him in a while. I guess he's gone, oh well..."

[Liberalagogo]

4. This might explain some of it, to a degree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jason_Callahan

[TwilightGardener]

5. The family presumed he just "went somewhere else to live", and that was

that. Mom didn't file a missing-persons report until 20 years had gone by of never having seen or heard from her son, when he was still a teenager. Yeah, wonder what ever happened to that kid that popped out of my loins almost 40 years ago? I should probably ask around...

[Sam_Fields]

6. My half brother took of at the age of 14 and he finally showed up on his facebook thrity years later

[SheilaT]

7. I cannot imagine just shrugging

off a missing child myself, but I'm constantly amazed at how many people have close relatives, usually siblings, that they haven't heard from in years and have no idea where they are.

Sad, but true.

[TwilightGardener]

9. I don't understand that either. Every time there are problems, tensions or hurt feelings in my own

family and our extended families, I think we put the fun in dysfunctional, but jesus--I'm pretty sure we'd all look for each other if someone disappeared, at least!

[SheilaT]

10. I'm with you on that.

But some families are truly, truly dysfunctional. Remember that case in Cleveland where three young women who'd been held captive for ten years were able to escape? One of the three, Michelle Knight, the first one taken, had been presumed to have taken off on her own, and no real effort was made to find her, not even by her own mother. An exceptionally sad case.

My sister's husband has one brother, several years younger, and he had disappeared for years on end. As an adult, he doesn't have to check in with his brother, and by the time this started happening the parents were dead. The last time I asked my sister, they had no idea where Mike was, and didn't really expect they'd ever hear much from him again.

The stories abound. While I'd never willingly lose complete contact with either of my sons, I worry that after I'm gone they could lose touch with each other. Although with social media these days -- and they are both on FB -- it's not quite so easy as it used to be.

[TwilightGardener]

11. Yes, the parents sometimes seem to be the glue that holds siblings in contact

as adults. I don't speak often to my brothers, and I'm not on Facebook, but then I know they're OK and their wives and kids are OK through my elderly parents, and I usually speak to them on the phone on holidays (I live far away from my hometown, where they still live). If there was trouble, I'd know it. When my parents are gone, we're going to have to get better at staying in contact without the "hub connection" of mom and dad.

[Blue_Tires]

16. Well, not all families are close

and we don't know what kind of home life he had...just saying...

[SoapBox]

8. wow...

At a minimum, at least he has been identified.

RIP Jason.

[Hugin]

12. It makes me happy he finally has a name.

At least he was living his dream at the end. It sounds like he was a good kid.

RIP, super fan Jason Callahan.

[Hekate]

13. Untold numbers of Americans just disappear every day, never to be seen again.

There's no way to tell how many of them simply want to leave their old life behind, or how many came to a bad end.

Families are complicated, and sometimes full of pain. It's very possible his family simply didn't know what to do. He went off on the road to follow the Grateful Dead. Well, that's hardly a clue. He didn't stay in touch. They probably felt bad about it, but he wasn't initially "missing."

Why did his mom wait 20 years to file a missing person's report? My guess is she is feeling her own age about now, and her desire to find out what happened to her son overcame the inertia of years.

[Tab]

14. Actually, they knew what to do

but they didn't know where to do it.

He had taken off to follow the Dead, and apparently he'd taken off before. Ultimately his mother figured out he was missing but because he was trekking around she had no idea where he was last seen and thus no idea what jurisdiction in the country to file a report with (this was pre-Internet, so you'd have to contact each and every county in the country). It wasn't until January of this year that the center for missing children released the computer model of what the dead passenger likely looked like, whereupon they contacted the authorities (likely haven long given up on hearing from him). Prior to that they figured he just boogied, and since there's no Internet there's really no "footprint" or clues to try to chase. It's like living in a cabin in the woods and trying to figure out where someone might have gone over a multi-year period. He could be anywhere in the world, and there's no way to find out.

[Blue_Tires]

15. Holy damn...

I was 19 in 1995...